Medieval France in the context of "Kingdom of Germany"

In the early modern period, from the Renaissance (c. 1500–1550) to the Revolution (1789–1804), the Kingdom of France was a monarchy ruled by the House of Bourbon (a Capetian cadet branch). This corresponds to the so-called Ancien Régime ("old rule"). The territory of France during this period increased until it included essentially the extent of the modern country, and it also included the territories of the first French colonial empire overseas.

The period is dominated by the figure of the "Sun King", Louis XIV (his reign of 1643–1715 being one of the longest in history), who managed to eliminate the remnants of medieval feudalism and established a centralized state under an absolute monarch, a system that would endure until the French Revolution and beyond.

The House of Plantagenet (/plænˈtædʒɪnɪt/ plan-TAJ-in-it) was a royal house which originated in the French county of Anjou. The name Plantagenet is used by modern historians to identify four distinct royal houses: the Angevins, who were also counts of Anjou; the main line of the Plantagenets following the loss of Anjou; and the Houses of Lancaster and York, two of the Plantagenets' cadet branches. The family held the English throne from 1154, with the accession of Henry II, until 1485, when Richard III died in battle.

England was transformed under the Plantagenets, although only partly intentionally. The Plantagenet kings were often forced to negotiate compromises such as Magna Carta, which constrained royal power in return for financial and military support. The king was no longer just the most powerful man in the nation, holding the prerogative of judgement, feudal tribute and warfare, but had defined duties to the realm, underpinned by a sophisticated justice system. By the end of the reign of Edward III, the Plantagenets developed a new identity including adopting the language of the ordinary people—Middle English—as the language of governance. This is one of the reasons that the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography considers Edward III as culturally the first English Plantagenet ruler.

Pope Urban VI (Latin: Urbanus VI; Italian: Urbano VI; c. 1318 – 15 October 1389), born Bartolomeo Prignano (Italian pronunciation: [bartoloˈmɛːo priɲˈɲaːno]), was head of the Catholic Church from 8 April 1378 to his death, in October 1389. He was the last pope elected from outside the College of Cardinals. His pontificate began shortly after the end of the Avignon Papacy. It was marked by immense conflict between rival factions as a part of the Western Schism, with much of Europe, such as France, the Iberian Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, and Scotland recognizing Clement VII, based in Avignon, as the true pope.

The double-headed eagle is an iconographic symbol originating in the Bronze Age. The earliest predecessors of the symbol can be found in the Ancient Near East (i.e., Mesopotamia and Hittite iconography) and Mycenaean Greece. Most modern uses of the emblem are directly or indirectly associated with its use by the Palaiologos dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, a use possibly derived from the Roman Imperial Aquila. High medieval iterations of the motif can be found in Islamic Spain, France, the Bulgarian Empire and the Serbian principality of Raška. From the 13th century onward, it appeared within the Islamic world in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and the Mamluk Sultanate, and within the Christian world in Albania, the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, and Serbia. In a few places, among them the Holy Roman Empire and Russia, the motif was further augmented to create the less prominent triple-headed eagle.

A gendarme was a heavy cavalryman of noble birth, primarily serving in the French army from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period. Heirs to the knights of French medieval feudal armies, French gendarmes enjoyed like their forefathers a great reputation and were regarded as the finest European heavy cavalry force until the decline of chivalric ideals largely due to the ever-evolving developments in gunpowder technology. They provided the King of France with a potent regular force of armored lancers which, when properly employed, dominated late medieval and early modern battlefields. Their symbolic demise is generally considered to be the Battle of Pavia, which saw the gendarmes suffer a disastrous defeat and inversely confirmed the rise of the Spanish Tercios as the new dominant military force, leading to the preeminence of the House of Habsburg in 16th century Europe.

In Medieval France a paréage or pariage was a feudal treaty recognising joint sovereignty over a territory by two rulers, who were on an equal footing, pari passu; compare peer. On a familial scale, paréage could also refer to the equal division of lands and the titles they brought between sons of an inheritance.

Such a power-sharing contract could be signed between two secular rulers or, more often, by a secular and an ecclesiastic ruler, as happened in the most famous case—the Act of paréage of 1278, which served as the legal basis for the Principality of Andorra and was signed by the Count of Foix and Viscount of Castellbo and the Bishop of Urgell. According to the act, the Count and the Bishop were to receive taxes in alternating years, while jointly appointing local representatives to administer justice, and they were to refrain from making war within Andorra (where they were each nevertheless allowed to levy soldiers). The wording of a paréage, an exercise in defining reciprocity without sacrificing suzerainty, was the special domain of ministerial lawyers, who were produced in the universities from the late eleventh century.

During the early modern period, from the Renaissance (c. 1500–1550) to the Revolution (1789–1804), the Kingdom of France was a monarchy ruled by the House of Bourbon (a Capetian cadet branch). This corresponds to the so-called Ancien Régime ("old rule"). The territory of France during this period increased until it included essentially the extent of the modern country, and it also included the territories of the first French colonial empire overseas.

The period is dominated by the figure of the "Sun King", Louis XIV (his reign of 1643–1715 being one of the longest in history), who managed to eliminate the remnants of medieval feudalism and established a centralized state under an absolute monarch, a system that would endure until the French Revolution and beyond.